


Are We Human

by shealynn88



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Stolen Moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 14:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: Cas and Dean aren't quite what they were.  Set generally mid-S5.  Reflection and angst and first kisses and a temporary respite.“I wanted you to see it the way I do,” Cas says in a hushed tone. “I wanted you to feel human, too.”





	Are We Human

He hands Cas a beer because Sam is away for the night. Because he still wants to feel connected to someone.

“Come outside,” Cas says, taking the beer and walking out the door into the parking lot.

“I…okay,” Dean says, taking a swig as he follows Cas out.

He’s striding across the road, into a field across the street, out into the high grass and God knows why…

Actually, probably not. He’s been pretty quiet lately.

“What are we doing?” Dean asks when Cas finally stops, the motel faded in the distance.

Cas sighs, looking up. “Sometimes I like to be reminded,” he says quietly.

Dean looks up too, but there’s nothing but sky up there. Some clouds. There’s nothing apocalyptic or massive or winged up there. “Of what?” he asks.

“The beautiful things,” Cas murmurs. “The simple things.”

Dean barks a laugh. “Simple. Those were the fucking days.”

Castiel drops. To his knees, folds down, then tips back to lie on the ground, legs still folded under, pressed to one side. He looks messy. Fallen.

Dean follows him down without thinking. “You all right?”

“I am…tired.”

“I’m sorry.” Dean takes a drink and rubs his face. His neck. Sorry will never be enough. Castiel is cut off, cut up, because Dean asked him to be. Because Cas had believed when Dean should have known better.

He lies down in the grass and looks up.

“Orion’s Belt,” Cas tells him. Dean follows the long line of his arm, his index finger. It reminds him of that famous painting. Men on clouds, reaching out. Nearly touching. Almost, but not quite touching. Forever.

Jesus. His whole fucking life in the most dysfunctional nutshell.

Then Dean looks, finally, sees the vastness out beyond that hand, lets Cas guide him through the stars, their distances, the amount of time that has passed between the moment their light was emitted and the moment it touched their faces, met their eyes.

Dean glances over, wondering how much time it takes for light to bounce from Cas’s cheek to Dean’s eyes. How long for Cas to be seen. And if that light ever makes it back to whatever is inside that human vessel he carries around like another trench coat. Comfortable but not quite him.

Dean speaks. “You’re something…different.”

Castiel looks at him, uncomprehending.

“I forget, sometimes,” Dean clarifies, and his eyes are on Orion’s shoulders now, the strong stance of him pulling back his bow. “That you’re not human.”

“Do you?” Cas sounds wistful. “I don’t. It never feels quite right.”

Dean reaches out, grabs a sleeve, a finger, a hand. It fits in a way he’s never really allowed himself to imagine.

Not with anyone.

He is a hunter. He is here to fight til his last breath. There is nothing simple or beautiful about his role. Never has been. Battle. Blood. Endings. Pain. Betrayal. Love ‘em and leave ‘em but for God’s sake (not really, He’s bullshit anyway) don’t love them. Not really. Not ever.

Love is for people with futures. People with lives. Love is for people with hope, who haven’t been to Hell and come back dead inside.

“Why did you bring me?” Dean asks. Not up. That was Heaven’s choice. More battles. More death.

But why here? Why this gentleness?

“I think this may be the most human thing I know,” Cas tells him quietly. “To feel small under the stars. To feel small but not…alone.”

Dean can do that. Be Cas’s ‘not alone.’

“I wanted you to see it the way I do,” Cas says in a hushed tone. “I wanted you to feel human, too.”

And that is somehow so much harder.

Dean’s not sure he has that in him anymore. That softer side of Sears sort of got pushed out with the pain, and then the joy of causing pain. So much to atone for and no way to do it, and humanity is sort of…like his appendix, now. Left over, but no longer useful.

His first instinct is to leave Cas in the field, looking up.

But there are fingers tangled with his. That he tangled there. He sort of owes something. Maybe.

“Any tips?” he finally asks.

Cas moves next to him. A shrug. A gulp. A shuffle. Then his head is fitting perfectly in the curve of Dean’s shoulder. “Look,” he says. “And breathe. Breathing is so…human.” He says it longingly.

Dean has looked at the sky. He’s star-gazed before. But to see the Milky Way now, knowing what he knows. Having had the soul torn out of him and then thrust back in…it’s different. Outside looking in. Something gets lost there, when you know how absent the creator behind those stars is. How useless, how careless with His creations.

Cas shows him Canis Major. Ursa Major. Traces the stars at the top to the Little Dipper.

As Dean’s eyes acclimate he sees more. Smaller lights, not so bright. Something that doesn’t look like a star.

“A satellite,” Cas tells him.

Humans have put that there. Way out there in the darkness of space. No help from God or Angels. Just human ingenuity at work.

“That?”

“Mars.”

“Really?” Sam had shown him once, and Dean had nodded and forgotten. It had seemed irrelevant at the time but suddenly it seems important. That it’s not just earth. That there’s more. That he is small, and not the one thing standing between the human race and the end of times.

Even if he is.

They lie there for a long time. Dew gathers cool on their clothes.

Dean loosens his hold on Cas’s hand when his gets sweaty and numb, and Cas shifts away.

It’s not what he meant.

Dean turns on his side and nestles in where he fits, arm to arm, head notched under chin, and Cas’s hand, the one not pinned under him, now, comes around to touch his shoulder. Pull him closer.

Dean whispers, “Am I still…”

He doesn’t finish asking because he doesn’t want to know.

Castiel touches his face, and the sensation is gently electric. Long fingers smooth the line of his cheek, eyebrow, slide back into his hair.

“Human? Of course.” Lips press into his hair. “Don’t you know?” Cas asks, hushed. “Don’t you know how perfectly flawed and stubborn and short-sighted you are?”

He says it as if this is the height of perfection. As if Dean is admirable.

Dean laughs softly. “It’s been said.”

“And don’t you know how wonderfully…human it is?”

“You hate all of that,” Dean reminds him.

Cas looks at him like he’s changed the subject. “But, I’m an…I’m not human.”

As if he doesn’t know what he is anymore.

“What a pair we make,” Dean breathes. It sounds more intimate than he intended. And Cas is much closer than he realized.

“Yes,” Cas says, and his breath is a little uneven. He inches a little bit closer. “I feel…strange,” he says at last.

“Here,” Dean offers, kissing him gently. “Better or worse?”

Cas tips his head, contemplating. “Different. Let me…” he leans in, and Dean meets him again, lips gentle and pressing and asking. Two beings in between, meeting in the middle, somewhere neither of them exactly exist.

Cas’s tongue tastes like water. Then wine. How is it possible that he still tastes pure after everything?

Dean is sure he tastes of sin and ash. That given enough time Cas will choke on him and pull away.

He doesn’t.

“Okay?” Dean asks finally, breathlessly.

“Yes. I feel…not human. But I feel like… _someone_.”

Dean nods. _Yes_. Yes, exactly.

They share breath and saliva and gasps and sensations until they’re panting, until they’re smiling and Dean isn’t thinking about fighting for once. “You are,” he says softly. “You are someone.”

“We are,” Cas corrects, and kisses him until the sun rises, and Dean feels seen by the light of the sun (eight minutes and twenty seconds old) and the new light of those blue eyes and whatever lies beneath, and he begins to see things a little differently.

Not human, perhaps. But _someone_.

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me over on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shealynn88).
> 
> Similar Destiel Stories:  
> [Love is Not a Victory March](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19095856) Rated T: _This love blasts in on razor wings, hauls him out of Hell, scars him out of the gate, tells him he’s nothing. Tells him he’s everything._  
> [Communion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841417) Rated M: _He’s not greedy. Just this moment. Forever promises to be Hell, so why not just this single moment of something pure and true and base and human?_


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